381–390 of 1001 posts
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That's the core problem with this approach. Elon and others have the idea in their head that Twitter is a social graph where people come to interact with each other, and everyone is relatively equal. So every user paying $X/mo to solidify their place in the graph makes some conceptual sense. In reality Twitter is more akin to YouTube than Facebook. A tiny percentage of users are creators while the vast majority are c…
> So you want to instead do the exact opposite – ask the consumers to pay and fund your creators with that money. I think it's only Onlyfans that can get away with such a business model.
A lot of people aren't groking what this means, even on tech and startup savvy HN. Naval and Balaji said it well: Charging for the blue check moves it from a status symbol to a utilitarian one. It elicits shrieks because it’s more about leveling the playing field than making money. https://twitter.com/naval/status/1587523978456748033 The blue checks wanted to abolish billionaires, in the name of equality. The billion…
So it becomes worthless to the ones who want it as a status symbol. Why pay if you aren't something special afterwards?
A lot of people aren't groking what this means, even on tech and startup savvy HN. Naval and Balaji said it well: Charging for the blue check moves it from a status symbol to a utilitarian one. It elicits shrieks because it’s more about leveling the playing field than making money. https://twitter.com/naval/status/1587523978456748033 The blue checks wanted to abolish billionaires, in the name of equality. The billion…
i m not really seeing it. The old money (journalists of mainstream newspapers) can leave and take all the audiences with them. Their audience is there for the narrative and ideology, not because they are fond of Twitter. Twitter does not have a "native" audience, because it claims to be a platform. If they engaged deeper with content producers (like substack does) they might have. It's a solely megaphone, hence usele…
Are you implying there are no legitimate discussions between non-checkmarked users today on Twitter? That there is only a leader(check-marked users) and follower dynamic?
The good: Twitter should not be editorally curating people through verification, making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change, as long as it's not necessary for participation. Brands, celebrities, those in the public eye could benefit from this. Needs to be implemented with care and ideally with a branding change so as not to confuse users as the semantics change. The bad: $8 is…
There's nothing good. When everyone can buy a checkmark, it becomes nothing. The next step is "only allow replies from blue checkmarks" both are bad ideas, and solely because of musk's obsession with bots. Without a mob to prop up people with retweets, twitter will be useless. You cant have the good parts without the ugly parts
Blue checkmarks are not just about verification and extra features. They’re a status symbol. They mean you are cool and notable enough to deserve one according the shadowy and mysterious Twitter checkmark committee. If they become a commodity that anyone with a little money can buy, they lose a big part of their appeal to the average person.
I initially thought this too, but then I remembered: a lot of people on social media care very much about how many followers they get, how many likes they get, etc. Under the new plan, you will get priority in replies, mentions, and search. I think that will have a lot of value for people addicted to likes. The checkmarks won't be a status symbol anymore, but the masses will want their tweets prioritized.
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One of the things I admire about Elon (which is saying a lot...) is that for whatever reason, he's ready to bet the farm over and over. Whether he's some genius tactician or an impulsive moron, he just bought Twitter and is poised to drastically alter it. "flies in the face of everything I understand about complex systems" indeed! Forgive me for this analogy but it's in the news: Imagine if NATO just said one day, "y…
I don't quite think it is luck - but a weird second thing. Musk has a reality distortion field. I think he is a bloviating jerk but I know a lot of really really smart and dedicated engineers in software and in more traditional fields like mech-e and aerospace who would rather work for Musk than any other person and are willing to take pay cuts to work for him. This means he really can surround himself with very skil…
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I don’t think you could have misread this interaction more than you already have.
I can see how you think that if you're not familiar with how blue checks are awarded and what they mean to the nobility class of Twitter.
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King responds saying Twitter should be paying him. I think that makes a lot of sense.
Completely wrongheaded. If anything, twitter should be paying anonymous users. Bluechecks are the ones who use twitter to build their personal brand, sell books, etc..
The dynamics on Twitter are quite weird. There’s a small number of users with potentially lots of followers for whom Twitter is an important part of their work or life. If you’re a journalist, being on Twitter is basically part of your job so maybe you should have to pay a bit more just like the customer of some business software ($100 pa seems pretty cheap there). Indeed maybe media publications should be paying for…
Saw a roundtable about this and a film maker said it was really hard when they're about to release a film and someone uses a fake Twitter handle that's close to theirs releases the trailer or footage before they wanted it released.
Paying to have a blue check on their account would cut down this type of piracy or release of trailers before the producer wants to. They said it would be very worth it to maintain the legitimacy of what they're doing.
I'm assuming other types of creators would see the value in being able to say, "If its not from my verified account, then its not (me, my work, my companies work) and you should ignore it."